Hello nerds!
We recently updated our user manual to add a section on media uploads, including image descriptions and which bits of metadata (exif tags) are and aren't excised from media uploads.
docs.gotosocial.org/en/latest/…
We were reminded recently that while GoToSocial strips metadata reliably from image types, we don't yet strip metadata from videos. That means that if you have "location data" or "geotagging" enabled in the camera app of your device when you record a video, and you upload that video without re-encoding it or removing metadata tags from it in some other way, location data may be encoded into the video file, which presents a privacy issue.
Unlike corpo social media, many fedi implementations (to the best of our knowledge) remove sensitive metadata when they compress/reencode images/videos, or at least give you the option to configure your server to do so.
- Pleroma (optional component): docs-develop.pleroma.social/ba…_graphics_packages/#exiftool
- Akkoma (optional component): docs.akkoma.dev/stable/install…_graphics_packages/#exiftool
- Misskey, Sharkey, Catodon etc we're not sure about (no hits in the docs).
- Pixelfed definitely strips exif metadata for images: github.com/pixelfed/pixelfed/i…
- Mastodon automatically removes metadata when reencoding: github.com/mastodon/mastodon/i…
As such, the fact that GtS doesn't yet strip metadata from videos specifically will probably be a "gotcha" for some users coming from other fedi softwares. A warning about this has now been added to the docs, but we're putting the warning out here too so people are aware of the issue.
So, please be careful when uploading videos! If you haven't done so already, we recommend going to your device's camera app and turning off "location data" so that video clips do not have your coordinates added to them.
We will be adding this issue to the list of things to do before we leave alpha and enter beta, and we'll announce it here when we implement a fix.
Thanks for reading :)
Strip EXIF from uploaded images · Issue #85 · mastodon/mastodon
Hi, For privacy reasons could we strip EXIF metadata from images ? At least the GPS data ? And maybe keep the "Taken on" date. example here : https://mastodon.social/users/vayan/updates/14461GitHub